When Filial Piety Is the Law
By YU HUA, NYT
BEIJING — China’s revised law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People took effect last Monday. A clause now stipulates: “Family members living apart from the elderly should frequently visit or send greetings to the elderly persons.”
“I am breaking the law,” some people suddenly realized.
The new law has been controversial. The official media have sung a chorus of praise, as though China has suddenly found a solution to a moral plague. But skepticism abounds among Internet commentators and the public.
Some protest that their employers insist that they work overtime, even on holidays, giving them no chance to go home to see their parents. Even more people complain that they can’t afford to make frequent home visits, and have no choice but to wait until they have a long vacation. And there are pointed comments to the effect that, for decades now, the official media have been extolling those exemplary workers who stay at their posts during the Spring Festival. With the implementation of the new law, they ask sarcastically, are these model workers going to end up in jail? It’s just a joke, of course, since “should” carries no punitive connotations.
(More here.)
BEIJING — China’s revised law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People took effect last Monday. A clause now stipulates: “Family members living apart from the elderly should frequently visit or send greetings to the elderly persons.”
“I am breaking the law,” some people suddenly realized.
The new law has been controversial. The official media have sung a chorus of praise, as though China has suddenly found a solution to a moral plague. But skepticism abounds among Internet commentators and the public.
Some protest that their employers insist that they work overtime, even on holidays, giving them no chance to go home to see their parents. Even more people complain that they can’t afford to make frequent home visits, and have no choice but to wait until they have a long vacation. And there are pointed comments to the effect that, for decades now, the official media have been extolling those exemplary workers who stay at their posts during the Spring Festival. With the implementation of the new law, they ask sarcastically, are these model workers going to end up in jail? It’s just a joke, of course, since “should” carries no punitive connotations.
(More here.)
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